[UK] Keeping an eye on the future at IAB Digital Techfronts

This year, for the first time, nearly 60% of UK display advertising is expected to be programmatic, according to eMarketer—and next year, more than 50% of all media ad spend in the UK will be digital, according to a study by Carat. Clearly, media agencies have already made a huge shift toward technology. But as agencies’ star employees turn from Mad Men into Maths Men, how is the industry changing? And what is the real relationship between media agencies and their ad-tech partners?

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In our Welcome to the Era of Mad Tech report, we surveyed 200 UK media agencies to explore how advertising technology (‘ad tech’) is transforming agencies’ traditional business model. According to our research, as media trading in the digital world grows more complex, ad tech is the only way forward. The vast majority—a whopping 87%—of agencies told us that they are already shifting their business model to accommodate ad tech’s growing influence.

Ad tech’s unabated expansion has severely disrupted the marketing ecosystem. It has shaken the way media agencies operate, forcing them to find new ways of assigning value in a world that no longer depends solely on percentage of spend or arbitrage revenue models. Since the late 2000s, agencies have been trying to fight off the ‘chaos’ created by ad tech, and it hasn’t been easy. However, with almost 70% of media agencies shifting toward digital and technology in the hopes of future-proofing themselves, according to our survey, these former turf wars between media agencies and ad tech companies have given way to a conciliatory approach that is open to ad tech.

Join our CMO Adam Berke on Thursday 17th March 2016 at IAB’s Digital Techfronts, as he shares the latest insights on the subject and also showcases what is going on in the minds of UK agencies in this Mad Tech Era. Register here now.